Petition by ladies in Steubenville, OH, against Indian removal

Background Notes

One
of the strategies developed to deal with the conflict between white American
settlers and Native American lands was to negotiate treaties, which voluntarily
exchanged the lands of Indian tribes in the east for lands west of the Mississippi. Five
assimilated tribes, the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw and Seminoles,
known as the “Five Civilized Tribes” negotiated approximately thirty treaties
with the United States
between 1789 and 1825. In 1824, President Monroe announced to Congress that he
thought all Indians should be relocated west of the Mississippi. Monroe
was pressured by the state of Georgia
to make his statement because gold had been discovered on Cherokee land in
Northwest Georgia and the state of Georgia wanted to claim it. The
Cherokee’s resisted and sought to maintain their land. They had adopted a
formal constitution, declared an independent Cherokee nation, and elected John
Ross as their Chief in 1828. As expected, the Georgia legislature annulled the
Cherokee constitution and ordered seizure of their lands. The Cherokees again
resisted and took their claim of sovereignty to the United States Supreme Court. In
their second case, Worcester v. Georgia, (1832) Supreme Court Chief Justice John
Marshall ruled that the Cherokee Nation was entitled to federal protection over
those of the state laws of Georgia.
The Court ruled “the Indian nation was a “distinct community in which the laws
of Georgia
can have no force” and into which Georgians could not enter without the
permission of the Cherokees themselves or in conformity with treaties. An
outraged President Andrew Jackson refused to enforce the ruling. Instead, Jackson used the funding
from his newly created Indian Removal Act of 1830 to forcibly remove the
recalcitrant tribes. There were, however, small pockets of opposition to the
removal of Cherokees in Georgia
and occasionally groups of people, such as the Quakers and an occasional
abolitionist championed their rights. These women from Steubenville, Ohio
used their only political right, the right of petition, to protest the Cherokee
removal and to argue in favor of Native American natural rights. Their petition
was ignored.

Robert V. Hine and John Mack Faragher, The
American West, A New Interpretive History ( New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 176;
Mary Beth Norton et al,A People and a Nation; A History of the
United States. (Boston:Houghton
Mifflin Company, 1986), 287-290.

Transcription of Primary Source

21stCongress,[Rep. No. 209.]Ho.of Reps.

1st Session

MEMORIAL OF THE LADIES OF STEUBENVILLE, OHIO,

Against the Forcible removal of the Indians
without the limits of the

United
States

—

February
15, 1830

Read:–
ordered that it lie upon the table.

—

To the Honorable the Senate and House of
Representatives of the United

States.

The memorial of the
undersigned, residents of the state of Ohio,
and town of Steubenville,

Respectfully
Sheweth:

That your
memorialists are deeply impressed with the belief, that the present crisis in
the affairs of the Indian nations, calls loudly on all who can feel for the woes of humanity, to solicit, with
earnestness, your honorable body to bestow on this subject, involving, as it
does, the prosperity and happiness of more than fifty thousand of our fellow
Christians, the immediate consideration demanded by its interesting nature and
pressing importance.

It
is readily acknowledged, that the wise and venerated founders of our country’s
free institutions have committed the powers of Government to those whom nature
and reason declare the best fitted to exercise them; and your memorialists
would sincerely deprecate any presumptuous interference on the part of their
own sex with the ordinary political affairs of the country, as wholly
unbecoming the character of the American females. Even in private life, we may
not presume to direct the general conduct, or control the acts of those who
stand in the near and guardian relations of husbands and brothers; yet all
admit that there are times when duty
and affection call on us to advise
and persuade, as well as to cheer or
console. And if we approach the public Representatives of our husbands and
brothers, only in the humble character of suppliants in the cause of mercy and
humanity, may we not hope that even the small voice of female sympathy will be heard?

Compared with the
estimate placed on woman, and the attention paid to her on other nations, the
generous and defined deference shown by all ranks and classes of men, in this
country, to our sex, forms a striking contrast; and as an honorable and
distinguishing trait in the American Character, has often excited the
admiration of intelligent foreigners. Nor is this general kindness lightly
regarded or coldly appreciated; but, with warm feelings of affection and pride,
and hearts swelling with gratitude, the mothers and daughters of Americabear testimony to the generous nature
of their countrymen.

When,
therefore, injury and oppression threaten to crush a hapless people within our
borders, we, the feeblest of the feeble, appeal with confidence to those who
should be representatives of national virtues as they are the depositaries of
national powers, and implore them to succor the weak and unfortunate. In
despite of the undoubted national right which
the Indians have to the landof their
forefathers, and in the face of solemn treaties, pledging the faith of the
nation for their secure possession of those lands, it is intended, we are told,
to force them from their native soil, to compel them to seek new homes in a
distant and dreary wilderness. To you, then, as the constitutional protectors
of the Indians within our territory, and as the peculiar guardians of our
national character, and our counter’s welfare, we solemnly and honestly appeal, to save this remnant of a much injured people
from annihilation, to shield our country from the curses denounced on the cruel
and ungrateful, and to shelter the American character from lasting dishonor.